Wednesday 24 October 2007

Listening and Learning

I called in to see my old newsagent today (I lived in Toxteth up until 2006) as I was in town for a meeting with a Green colleague. Sadly, a couple of his nephews had been killed by an American bomb in Baghdad, a reminder that while our lives in England remain relatively unaffected by the war, there are still people being hurt in a very personal way by what is going on.

About a year and half ago, I listened to two residents of Baghdad, dentists by profession, talk about their everyday experiences in the chaos they now lived in at a press conference held in London (http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2523). One of these dentists recounted a story about one of his former Shia patients (he was a Sunni) only to later find the dead body of his patient dumped outside his premises, with a warning about who he should treat. Both of these men were well educated, polite and warm individuals, but what remains with me is their comment about how little the pain and suffering they were experiencing reached into our national consciousness.

Local shops often act as a hub for news and source of information about the well being of our local communities. I'm sure if politicians spent a little more time with their local shopkeepers (Harry Perkins in "A Very British Coup"?) we would benefit in terms of our knowledge and our ability to meet the needs of local people. I'm sure I'll come back to this point again and again.

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